We arrived at the Autumnal Equinox yesterday so it is officially fall now although the signs of the season have been with us for some time already. The colors in the leaves seem to appear as if by magic, but they have been hiding there all through the green days just waiting for the diminishing light to trigger their debut. Fall can be unbelievably beautiful here. The forests here are primarily maple, oak, and cherry, all of which can be glorious in the fall. But the brilliance of the colors depends on the weather. Some years the spectacle is not very spectacular and other years it can take your breath away. I don’t know which it will be this year.
Last Sunday evening we celebrated Hazel’s birthday. It was a fine evening and we held the celebration out in the front yard. Josiah made a fire and we roasted hot dogs. The unicorn birthday cake had some problems, but in the end looked rather magical in an abstract way. It was nice to sit around the fire and eat and chat. We haven’t done that much this summer. And now summer is over. The sunset that evening was beautiful.
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| Hazel and her unicorn birthday cake. |
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| An evening by the fire. |
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| Sunset last Sunday. |
The rest of the week was pretty quiet. With my parents here, things seem to stay at a relatively calm level. They like to take the day easy, getting up late, eating a late breakfast, sitting and reading, or sitting and talking. On Wednesday my Aunt Esther Rathfon and my cousin Karen (her daughter) came for a visit. They live down state. It was so good to see them and spend a few hours talking together. When they left here, they went over to Middlebury Center to my cousin Rob’s house (he’s Esther’s son) to spend the night before heading home the next day. Back in my early days when we also lived down state, our families were very close. Back then we got together all the time and my cousins were my best friends. We don’t get together very often now. Time and distance have worked their wiles, but we still love each other and nothing can change that.
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| Relaxing and reading on the front porch. |
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| Cousin Karen, Aunt Esther, and my parents. |
Our friends the Joneses gave us several buckets of Roma tomatoes last week and I spent two days turning them into spaghetti sauce. I had three big pots of tomatoes cooking on the stove for two days. When the sauce was thick I added green peppers, onions, garlic, oregano, and basil and let it simmer for five hours before canning it. All those tomatoes were rendered down into seven quarts of very thick spaghetti sauce. The house was very fragrant for two days.
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| Seven quarts of spaghetti sauce. |
Hurricane Florence, which did so much damage down south, was supposed to bring us some rain early in the week. I guess the bit of rain that came on Tuesday was Florence. There wasn’t much of her left by the time she got here. On Friday night we had thunderstorms that were much more impressive. It poured rain and there was some thunder, lightning, and wind. When I went out Saturday morning I found the wind had blown over my potted plants and my morning glory trellis. They were all damaged, but not too seriously.
When I know rain is coming, I usually go out and cut flowers to bring into the house. Flowers like dahlias and zinnias get top heavy when it rains and fall over. So on rainy days we have bouquets to brighten the house.
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| A pre-rain bouquet of zinnias. |
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| A pre-rain bouquet of dahlias. |
Lately we have had very few days conducive to gardening. At this point I’ve stopped weeding. I’m letting everything slide until frost comes and then I will clean it all out. There isn’t much else to do right now. I have some late lettuce that’s almost ready to eat. There are a few cabbages left to harvest. This week we will bring all the pumpkins in and set them on the back porch to await processing or carving. Any time the weather clears, I spend most of my outdoor time mowing lawns or, now, leaves. The leaves are starting to fall and it will be an ongoing chore to mow or rake them up from now until the end of October. While I was mowing Shillig’s lawn last week I found a giant puffball mushroom. It was as big as a bowling ball. I mowed around it. I couldn’t destroy such a majestic mushroom.
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| The giant puffball mushroom. |
Last week we had two highly anticipated botanical events. The first event was indoors. My night-blooming cereus flowered, one bud opened on Monday night and the other on Wednesday night. The flowers were open just those nights. By morning they were shriveled up. While they were in bloom, they filled the house with a sweet perfume. The second event was outdoors. My colchicums are blooming. They are sometimes called autumn blooming crocuses, but they are not crocuses. In the spring they send up leaves that fade away in midsummer. Then in the fall, their flowers burst from the ground. They are lovely plants and their blooms are like the flower garden’s last hurrah before things get drab.
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| One of the night-blooming cereus flowers. |
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| Some of my colchicums. |
There are still some lovely flowers blooming. My morning glories are glorious, despite the tumble they took in the storm. The dahlias are still dazzling. Rachel and I were discussing flowers last week, trying to decide on a fall bulb order. We admitted that we both have a serious obsession with flowers. They are endlessly fascinating. Every year I want more – more in number and variety. Rachel inherited the obsession from me. And now that she has a nice big yard, she’s as crazy about gardens as I am. There are worse obsessions to have.
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| My morning glories. |
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| One my favorite dahlias. |
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| A white dahlia. |
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| A yellow dahlia. |
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| A red dahlia. |
Josiah has been busy ever since he got home working for our friends who own two funeral homes. He’s been itching to get started on some of my projects and on Friday afternoon he finally had time to do it. We decided the first project we would tackle was the woodshed. The woodshed is the place where things get dumped when no one wants to deal with them. I clean the woodshed several times a year. It’s amazing how quickly it becomes cluttered. So Josiah and I proceeded, in the usual manner, to take everything out, sort through it all, and then redistribute items to one of four places – the burn pile, the trash, the thrift store, or back into the woodshed. We also put up some new shelves and took down and rehung tools on the walls. It took us two days because we started late, but when it was all done, we felt a huge sense of accomplishment. We vowed never to let the woodshed get cluttered again. We’ll see how that goes. So one project down, eight more to go. The next project we plan to tackle is cleaning and winterizing the barn, upstairs and down.
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| The woodshed after cleaning. |
Miriam and Hannah drove down to the Thayn’s for the weekend. They found out about a Highland Festival taking place down there and had to go and check it out. They are crazy about bagpipes and boys in kilts. From the photos they sent, it looks like they had a great time. They will be home later tonight.
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| Hannah, Miriam, and Mable at the Highland Festival. |
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| June with a small Celtic harp. |
Yesterday we ran some errands up in Wellsville and on our way home we found a juvenile red-tailed hawk that had been hit by a car on the road outside Genesee. We stopped and I wrapped it my hoodie and we brought it home. I called my friend David Hauber who works with birds. He came and got it and took it to a bird rehabilitation center up in Olean, New York. I hope it survives, but it doesn’t look promising.
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| The injured hawk. |
Ever since Friday’s storm on the eve of Autumn’s official arrival, the weather has been cooler. This morning when I went down to the morning chores, it was 38°. It feels like fall. I’ve pulled out my long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. I see frost warnings on the national weather map for areas to the north of us all the time now. It won’t be long before it happens here. It makes me sad, but I also welcome it. It signals the time to clean up and clear out the garden, to make the untidy jungle tidy again, to put the growing season of 2018 behind me and get things ready for next year. There’s a lot to do in the days ahead. The biggest part of the apple harvest is still ahead. It will be cider time soon. And there’s the leaves. It is amazing how many leaves our maple trees drop. And there’s the year end mowing of the meadow and the orchard yet to do. It’s a lot of hard work, but I love to see the garden at rest when I’m done.
Speaking of rest, I love the Sabbath. How wise God was to give us a day of rest. We’re home from church now having paid our devotions and offered our oblations and sacraments unto the Most High. Now the rest of the day of rest should be pretty quiet. We’ll eat a simple meal, maybe take a short nap, and then we’ll enjoy being together for an evening unencumbered by the cares of world. Good Sabbath.
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| Sunset on the first day of fall. |
